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Ooh… aah… ohh! It’s amazing to carve a fish this large, and a lot of work to boot! As someone who has worked in the seafood industry, I can testify that carving large, whole fish such as the tuna in this short film requires what my grandmother might have refered to as, “elbow grease”.

A must-see tourist spot in Tokyo.

Tourists often flock to where the most elite of the ocean’s creatures, living or dead, are paraded, poked, haggled over, butchered, and auctioned off to the highest bidder… world famous Tsukiji Fish Market. Being 56 acres of warehouses, hangar, and loading docks, Tsukiji Fish Market handles about 5 million pounds of fish everyday. Their ultimate destinations are restaurants, department stores, bento boxes, and MANY dinner plates. Fish is a big part of the Japanese diet.

If you ever go to Japan, please visit Tsukiji Fish Market. The best time to go is early in the morning before 9am. Tsukiji Market is best accessed from Tsukijishijo Station on the Subway Oedo Line or Tsukiji Station on the Subway Hibiya Line. Read more http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e3021.html>here.

Want to know more about Japanese cuisine? Check out this really good book.

Tokyo – Japan’s Prince Akishino has confided to a friend that his wife Princess Kiko is to have a boy, who will be the first male heir born into the royal family in four decades, a magazine reported on Thursday.

The Shukan Bunshun quoted an unidentified friend who said the prince told him the tightly guarded news three months ago.

“A close friend asked Prince Akishino, ‘After having two daughters, Princesses Mako and Kako, would the next baby be a boy?'” the weekly said.

Masako, a US-educated former career diplomat, has suffered years of stress due to pressure to bear a boy and adapt to the tradition-bound monarchy.

The crown couple and their daughter returned Thursday from a two-week holiday in the Netherlands, the first time a Japanese royal has gone overseas for recuperation.

Japanese media broadcast rare footage of a beaming Masako and Aiko during the vacation, in contrast to the mother and daughter’s usual formality in Japan.

Kiko’s pregnancy was a dream come true for conservatives as it led Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to backtrack on widely supported reforms to allow a woman to ascend the Chrysanthemum Throne.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe, a conservative who is the front-runner to succeed Koizumi in late September, expressed his caution Thursday about sudden changes to succession rules.

“Royal succession affects the base of our nation, and it is extremely important that we create a system that ensures stable succession,” Abe, who has said little recently on the succession debate, told reporters.

“The government wants to work carefully and calmly so that we can gain consensus from all parts of the public,” he said, adding that he was praying for Kiko’s safe delivery.

The Shukan Bunshan said ruling party lawmakers, medical experts and journalists who cover palace affairs already talk as if the baby will be a boy.

The friend of Akishino told the magazine, however, that there is still a room for uncertainty.

“The comment was said at a time when it was possible to tell the sex of the baby, but he is not the type of person who would casually disclose such an important piece of information,” the friend told Shukan Bunshun.

The magazine said it was possible that Akishino was not confirming the sex of his long-awaited baby but instead was trying to avoid disappointing his friend who hoped for a boy. – Sapa-AFP

“Tomohiro Yasui started crafting them in 1982, at age 11, because he couldn’t bear the thought of playing with his precious store-bought bots – what if the paint chipped or an arm fell off?! So he used cardboard, scissors, wire, tape, and markers to construct his own durable automatons. Yasui, now a designer, went on to build hundreds of handmade creations…”